Twitter restores NBC critic’s account

In a welcome about face, Twitter has restored the account of Independent correspondent Guy Adams, who posted a series of critical comments about NBC’s handling of the Olympics.

“Oh. My Twitter account appears to have been un-suspended. Did I miss much while I was away?” he wrote a little after 10:30 this morning.

Adams followed up by saying: “Twitter emails to tell me: ‘we have just received an update from the complainant retracting their original request.’”

While it’s encouraging to hear NBC backed away from its complaint, it remains disturbing that Twitter revoked the account in the first place and refuses to take responsibility for the egregious mistake.

Update: Twitter did finally offer an explanation and limited apology in a corporate blog post by Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray.

“When our Trust and Safety team receives a report from a user explaining that his/her private personally-identifiable information has been posted on Twitter, we investigate the issue and temporarily suspend the account if it is found to be violating our Guidelines & Best Practices,” he wrote. “We make it possible for people to report posting of their private information because it may be used to harass or intimidate, and in certain circumstances may even be illegal.”

In a tweet, but not in the official blog post, Macgillivray said directly to Adams: ”Let me to add (sic) my personal apology for your suspension.”

But let’s be perfectly clear: Twitter suspended a user for committing an act of journalism.

The mind boggling move undermines the San Francisco startup’s credibility as a supposed advocate of open communications, and whittles away the goodwill of professional and citizen journalists who are the lifeblood of the service.

In a series of tweets in recent days, Adams colorfully assailed, among other things, NBC’s ridiculous decision to force West Coast viewers to watch the Olympics on a time delay, presumably so the network could charge prime time advertising rates.

It’s been an infuriating experience for fans who can’t duck the spoilers blasting at them from all quarters of the Internet. Adams simply supplied them an appropriate outlet for those frustrations in the tweet that supposedly got his account deactivated.

Twitter told Adams he violated their terms of service by posting private information, specifically NBC Olympics President Zenkel’s e-mail address. But that flimsy explanation falls down under the lightest scrutiny.

Sure, social security numbers are private, credit card numbers are private. But the corporate e-mail address of a prominent executive of a major company is not private, especially when it can be readily found online — Twitter’s own published test for private information.

As others have pointed out, if Adams deserved to have his account suspended for this, what about Spike Lee?

The movie director errantly tweeted out what he thought was the home address of George Zimmerman, the man accused of shooting and killing Trayvon Martin earlier this year. Instead it was the home of an elderly couple who ended up having to flee to a hotel in fear for their lives.

San Francisco Twitter member Laura Gluhanich asked an even more pointed question on Monday: “I wonder why Twitter never deleted the account that posted my home address and threatened to dismember me.”

Adam’s tweet didn’t amount to harassment or anything like publication of private facts. It amounted to a public service, one this publication serves every week in writing Chronicle Watch. The series highlights issues of community concern — most recently the human excrement clogging up BART escalators — and provides readers contact information for the person responsible for addressing it.

It makes people like BART’s chief of police — or in Adam’s case Zenkel — accountable to those directly affected by their decisions, actions or inactions. If Zenkel’s e-mail is bombed by disappointed NBC customers, maybe that should tell him something — and if his fragile ego can’t take that sort of criticism, maybe that should tell his board something.

Twitter isn’t just turning its back on journalists; it’s turning its back on itself. One of the most powerful attributes of social networking is that it hands megaphones to ordinary people, making it increasingly difficult for companies or politicians to ignore valid complaints that go viral.

But here’s what really worrisome about Twitter’s decision. The company, which is only beginning to gain real advertising traction, is a commercial partner with NBC on the Olympics, trading promoted tweets for on air promotion.

It’s good that NBC and Twitter finally backed down in the wake of massive online criticism, notably across Twitter itself. But the fact they made this decision in the first place raises a troubling question about how readily the company will trade its previously firm stance on free speech for commercial interests.

You might say this is a trivial matter. It’s just an argument over a time delay, not an uprising in the Arab world. But that’s the very point: If Twitter relents to an advertising partner on a small matter, how can we trust them on the big ones?

Making the matter worse is that NBC says it was Twitter that first informed them of the “offending” tweet, according to The Telegraph.

Twitter’s Macgillivray confirmed and apologized for that specific action in the blog post.

“We want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up,” he wrote. “The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.”

“As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are,” he continued. “This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is — whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. As of earlier today, the account has been unsuspended, and we will actively work to ensure this does not happen again.”

He did not address the allegation in the Telegraph article that Twitter had reportedly asked Adams to apologize to Zenkel in order to have his account restored.

If that part is true, here’s my response: Sorry, but no, Twitter, you don’t get to pressure a journalist into apologizing for doing his job. And where you would find the nerve to do so is beyond me.

Whether intentionally or not, Twitter is now inextricably tied into the practice of digital journalism; it’s the news feed of the modern age. But it’s a symbiotic relationship that Twitter benefits from greatly, receiving vast amounts of content and commentary that helped build its massive user base.

The entirely appropriate trade-off is that the company should be expected to aggressively uphold the free speech values that are core to the trade, not just even when — but especially when — those complaining are Twitter’s corporate partners.